Social studies classrooms often have a back door through which a clandestine
curriculum enters with images from popular myths, media, and movies. The
scholarly discourse and the learning experience intertwine with this backdoor
curriculum of folklore, stereotypes, and sensational misinformation. Often
the fusion between Hollywood and the syllabus is so complete that fact
and fiction become confused, and ultimately, like Shakespeare or the Bible,
we are unsure of the source of our knowledge.

Content on India is particularly susceptible to these covert pressures.
At educational workshops about India and when making presentations to
high school students, I am inevitably asked about the worship of rats
in India. When I assert that it is absurd to teach this to students, teachers
often argue that they 'read it in an AP newswire." I found it difficult
to believe that in American classrooms rat worship is actually taught
as a bonafide Hindu practice until my own son came home from high school
and told me his World History teacher had made that very statement. The
son of my friend who lives in another state also reported the same thing.
Urban legends have metamorphosed into fact.

I have often explained to educators and students that the worship of
rats among Hindus, at an obscure temple in Rajasthan mentioned in that
now infamous AP wire report during the 'epidemic' in Surat in the early
nineties, is comparable to the worship among Christians of David Koresh
at the Davidian compound in Waco, Texas. This is an effective strategy,
since teachers and students respond passionately that though some Christians
may have worshiped David Koresh, it is certainly not a defining characteristic
of Christianity and is actually abhorrent to most Christians  as
is rat worship among Hindus. This analogy helps to deconstruct and discard
the flimsy tale of so-called rat worship in India.

When I make presentations about India at teachers' conferences or in
classrooms, the two most often asked questions are: "Why do women
wear a 'dot' on their foreheads?" and "Why, when there is so
much poverty in India, don't they eat all those cows?" These questions
broach issues of relevance and correlating non-Western practices to similar
experiences in the students' lives, within a context they can comprehend.

When information about India is contextualized and made relevant
rather than exotic and inexplicable, students will have a more realistic,
and hopefully nonbiased perspective of Indian culture. In answering
the question about beef eating, I explain it in several ways. I
mention the negative impact that raising beef for meat can have
on the environment and, citing statistics, explain that it is ecologically
highly inefficient to raise cattle for meat. It takes approximately
sixteen pounds of edible vegetable protein and 44,000 gallons of
water to make one pound of beef.1 India cannot afford
to waste that much protein and water in an inversely productive
ratio. I explain that cows are used primarily for milk, which is
a staple and one of the main caloric sources in India. In addition,
oxen are essential for pulling plows and carts and for crop irrigation.

Even more importantly, the cow is the national symbol, like the
eagle is the symbol of the U.S., where, in some states, even to
be in possession of an eagle feather, unless you are a member of
a registered tribe, is a criminal offense punishable by a $5,000
fine. To many Hindus, their cow is a member of the family, like
the family dog is loved in the U.S. We would never eat Rover. Americans
are repulsed by the thought of eating dog meat. Most Indians feel
the same about the flesh of cows. Americans can easily understand
this canine analogy: the thought of eating a cow is as repulsive
to most Hindus as the thought of eating a dog or a horse is to most
Americans. This does not preclude the eating of dogs or horses in
other countries. Culinary habits are quite culturally specific.

Illustration by Mark Stopke

A university student of Indian heritage suggested that teachers in World
History classes should make associations with something

Western that kids can understand  associate rebirth or moksha
with a Christian principle like being born again or salvation. If [teachers
discussed] the American flag and its [patriotic] symbolism,
suddenly it would become clear what a symbol is. Instead of just saying
that Hindus are idolaters, tell the students that the idols [revered
by Hindus] are [religious] symbols to them. Unless the teacher
explains it, in their own terms, the [students] think 'these
people are weird,' but if you explain about the symbolism of the flag,
it becomes rational.

Relating perceived oddities about India to aspects of life in the West
can shine a sympathetic light of commonality on practices and theories
that might otherwise appear laughable and strange. Grounding the unfamiliar
in a recognizable cultural context encourages transferability of respect
for other traditions and an appreciation for the pluralistic nature of
our world.

The "dot" on the forehead of Indian women is also easy to explain.
Though historically originating from a mark with religious connotations
still used by holy men and women and by priests, contemporary forms of
the 'dot' are often made from velvet and glitter. They play the same glamorous
role as lipstick or mascara.

Some fashion statements are shared across cultures, such as the painting
of women's nails and piercing of ear lobes, and others are particular
to a certain people, such as the bindi, or dot. As can be seen
by the growing popularity of nose rings among Western youths and blue
jeans among Indian teens, fashions borrowed from other countries can easily
become the norm.2

High school teachers often lament that India is more difficult to teach
than other countries in Asia. They complain it's too diverse, too ancient,
too exotic, too many gods with too many arms. Unfortunately, only a small
fraction of aspiring teachers are able to take courses about India during
their college experiences. Many educators are therefore at a disadvantage
when trying to understand the complexities, sophistication, and resilience
of Indic civilization, particularly the tremendous pressures and dynamic
changes that have occurred in Hindu/Indic traditions through the millennia.
Since teachers generally have inadequate academic preparation to teach
about India, the focus in our classrooms is often centered on the three
P's: population, poverty, and pollution  the usual perspective found
in popular media treatments of modern India.

Following the chronology of the World History curriculum from the "Cradle
of Civilization" approach, teachers often highlight the Indus-Saraswati
culture while studying ancient river valleys. Excavated ruins from the
Indus-Saraswati civilization extend over an area covering half a million
square miles, roughly the size of Western Europe  stretching a thousand
miles from the Himalayan foothills to the shores of the Arabian Sea. Sites
have been found in western Afghanistan near the Iranian border, across
most of present-day Pakistan and much of northwest India, including a
large seaport in Southern Gujarat. Salient archaeological and cultural
characteristics link these far-flung sites: the uniformity of building
styles and materials, advanced urban planning, a uniform standard of weights
and measures, hundreds of small seals carved from soapstone and decorated
with a wide variety of animal figures, and an as yet undeciphered script.
The symbols on these many small seals such as the Pipal or Bo tree, the
Brahma bull, the swastika, the trident, serpents, tigers, and a male figure
in a yogic or meditative position, often referred to as a "Proto-Shiva,"
are still sacred to modern-day Hindus.

High school level textbooks often take great interest in explaining about
the amazing drainage system of these 5,000-year-old urban sites. Many
dwellings were equipped with bathrooms that had facilities for showering
as well as a toilet. The sewage was channeled out of the private houses
to covered canals that ran alongside the public roadways. This hygienic
sewer system was far more advanced than anything found in contemporaneous
urban sites in the Middle East and even more efficient than can be found
in some less developed areas of modern India.

Many teachers in American high schools take the time, during the first
weeks of a World History course, to teach about this remarkable culture
that thrived for thousands of years with an economy based on commerce
and agriculture. Goods sent from the Indian subcontinent to Mesopotamia
and Sumeria, 4,500 years ago, included luxury items such as teak and sandalwood,
cotton, sesame oil, etched carnelian beads, lapis lazuli, precious and
semi-precious stones, and bronze ware. DNA testing has shown that cotton
used for wrapping a mummy in an Egyptian pyramid dated 2400 B.C.E. was
of Indian origin. There are cuneiform records indicating that even peacocks
were exported to the Fertile Crescent thousands of years ago. These are
facts that make history fascinating. However, the treatment of the Indus-Saraswati
civilization may be one of the only positive representations of India
offered to students until they get to the modern period, when most teachers
will take up the topic of Mahatma Gandhi and his influence on Dr. Martin
Luther King, Jr. The rest, several millennia of Indian history, is often
skipped because of the teacher's lack of familiarity or shortage of time.

When topics about India are discussed in American classrooms, one of
the most common themes is to focus on the caste system as the defining
feature of Indic civilization, the lens, as it were, through which a foreigner
can understand Hinduism. This is the usual approach, not only in World
History and World Geography classrooms, but in university courses as well.
At the high school level students sometimes play games in which they draw
lots to determine into what caste they have by chance been born. The students
must abide by prescribed hierarchical rules that proscribe certain behaviors
and allow specific privileges to a select group, namely the "power-hungry
dogmatic Brahmans." The untouchables are banished to one corner of
the classroom or forced to stand outside in the hallway.

American students, who are taught from grade one that equality is the
basis of our democratic society, will inherently feel negatively towards
the privileged Brahmans. Teachers consider the game successful if the
students playing the role of the upper castes gleefully lord their status
over their classmates, commanding them to do demeaning chores. The luck
of the draw determines their caste, their fate. There is little discussion
of the concepts of karma and samsara upon which the caste
system is based.

Karma is often erroneously defined as chance, fortune, fate, or
coincidence, when it is more aptly the sum total of a soul's experiences.
Our Karma is the residue or residual energy created by the power of our
thoughts, words, and deeds  this energy determines the future trajectory
of our soul's path. Karma has been likened to little specks of dust that
attach themselves to the pure white light of the soul that color and distort
our perceptions, which then create our understandings, thus determining
how we experience and respond to our lives. It is the result of an individual's
free will  cause and effect  that determines his or her destiny
. . . not random luck.

Samsara refers to the "rounds of rebirth" through which
a soul must pass in order to burn off accumulated karma and transcend
to higher states of consciousness. Our birth family, which according to
this system of thought we consciously choose at the time of conception,
as well as the personal challenges we will face, including the strengths
and weaknesses of our character, are determined by our past thoughts and
deeds. In this system each individual is responsible for his or her own
fate or destiny. There are no accidents of birth  poverty or riches,
a sorrow-filled life or one full of joy, traits such as kindness or cruelty,
are determined by our own previous actions and intentions. However, it
is important to understand that karma is not etched in stone and can be
altered by conscious efforts toward self-realization. Each soul is on
a journey that will ultimately lead to enlightenment. Our dharma,
determined by our accumulated karma, is more than mere chance or luck.
It is an intimate, individual spiritual path or calling, the unfolding
of which is unavoidable and also a sacred duty.3

In the ancient past, caste was not determined by birth but rather by
ability. This is one important historical caveat about the caste system
that is rarely explained to students. Historically there was a high degree
of caste mobility, and interrelationships between groups were in constant
flux. Many famous characters in Indian history, such as Valmiki, who wrote
the epic The Ramayana, are referred to as Brahmans, though Valmiki
was actually born in a low caste family. Numerous famous dynasties were
founded by men who were born into the servant caste and due to their great
deeds became kings  the strength of their personalities determined
their caste, not their parentage. Many scholars point out that through
census data formulated to serve the colonial project, and a quota system
designed to divide and rule, the British helped to reify the caste system.
Caste identity was, in the distant past, and is even now, far more adaptable
and far less codified than is understood in World History textbooks.

If being born in a certain caste is by chance, like the drawing
of lots, then it is certainly cavalier and unfair. But, if the caste system
is explained in the context of the broader epistemology, including a discussion
of dharma (duty, personal spiritual path) and karma, then the original
concept-dividing the work of society up according to the skill and predilection
of the individual-does not seem inherently evil but has a rationale, which
is seldom explained to school children.

The caste system, as taught in American classrooms, is represented as
the exact opposite of our democratic institutions. If a rigid caste system
is employed to explain the primary expression or essence of Indic civilization,
it makes that culture seem heartless and quite unfair and does not further
the understanding of the fluidity and mobility inherent in Hinduism. This
critique is not offered as an apology for the caste system, but as an
alternative to negatively objectifying caste as the evil other that ultimately
becomes the hallmark of Indian civilization. In a survey of high school
level World History textbooks, I found that more space is devoted to the
caste system than all the other characteristics of Hindu India combined,
such as art, literature, architecture, philosophy, economics, politics,
and the culturally rich and diverse population.

In textbooks, few other aspects of Hinduism are considered as relevant
or dealt with in comparable depth as is the caste system. What is downplayed
or rarely mentioned are India's postindependence efforts toward national
integration of its minorities and low caste citizens. Caste was made illegal
by the Indian constitution in 1950. But just as the Civil Rights Amendment
of 1965 did not immediately end racism in the U.S., the legal prohibition
against caste prejudice did not automatically end centuries of social
discrimination. Instead of objectifying the caste system as a curiosity
to be deplored, teachers should draw parallels between caste-based discrimination
and the tremendous obstacles that poverty stricken inner-city minority
families must face to overcome low class status in the United States.
Affirmative Action programs exist in both countries and are actually written
into the Indian Constitution.

From the perspective of Western civilization, which we regard as liberal
and egalitarian rising from the Enlightenment, we condemn hereditary castes.
Yet, our own societies have a similar past  divine right to rule,
inherited aristocracies and sharp class inequities. In all countries,
East and West, there are social divisions and vast differences in economic
classes that persist, despite the Reformation, Humanism, Marxism, or Capitalism.
The Brahman priest is a handy scapegoat to salve the Western conscience
and assert our moral superiority over this type of religiously sanctioned
inherited status. In later Sanskrit literature there are ironic stories
about "stupid Brahmans," but the spiritual powers of such saintly
figures as the sages, Vishwamitra and Valmiki, were considered essential
to the survival of the state.

In classical India, Brahmans were charged with the maintenance of religious
and societal continuity. There were instances of corrupt Brahmans, and
Hindu history has condemned them. However, countless Brahman priests undoubtedly
took their duties to the community seriously as well as their own personal
sadhana or religious practice. In most texts written in the West,
Brahmans are uniformly shown as irrelevant hangers-on to the royal court
and exploiters of the people.

For example, one textbook that I surveyed, World History: People and
Nations, by Anatole G. Mazour and John M. Peoples, published by Harcourt,
Brace, Javonovich in 1990, stressed that moral conduct was unimportant
to the Aryans  which, for those familiar with the relevant literature,
is easily refuted by the many Sanskrit eulogies to noble and virtuous
character. In fact, in the Hindu law books, Brahmans are given harsher
penalties than those given to other castes for the same crime. Brahmans
were held to a stricter moral code. This was not imposed upon them; Brahmans
wrote the law books.

The Mazour-Peoples textbook goes on to explain that during Brahmanic
rituals, "The important point was to perform the ceremony properly.
The good qualities of the person performing it did not matter." This
implies that Brahmans were not bestowed with adequately "good qualities,"
when in fact, according to Vedic tradition, Brahmans had to be in a state
of ritual purity to perform the ceremonies, which included proper behavior.
Statements such as this reinforce the perception that moral conduct, as
found in Indian philosophy, is relative and unimportant. Compared to the
later Semitic traditions, with their clearly articulated and specific
lists of do's and don'ts, Hinduism can appear to have fluid views of morality
when in fact there are detailed codes of behavior  honesty and trustworthiness
are highly valued.

Several times this World History textbook calls the moral character of
the Brahman priests into question. It states, "priests, called Brahmans,
prepared the proper ceremony for almost every occasion in life and charged
heavily for their services." However, many references from Vedic
sources indicate that the majority of Brahmans were poor and often took
only alms for their services. In later periods, due to royal land-grants
and the colonial patronage, many Brahmans became rich and powerful, and
some were corrupt. However, most were, and still are, scholars with modest
incomes. Still, the authors exclusively categorize Brahmans as rich people
who charged heavily for their services. This one-sided stereotype negates
a more well-rounded student understanding of Vedic-period Brahmans.

In the post-Enlightenment West, politics and government  political
economy  are primary in the historical narrative. The place of religion
and its role in the everyday functioning of historical and contemporary
Indian society is not adequately addressed. Brahmans are therefore always
suspect and unnecessary. A wellknown historian of India, Stanley Wolpert,
wrote that Brahmans were "guardians and interpreters of that sacred
lore," and as "officiators of the royal sacrifice, the Brahman
priesthood maintained its special privileges and courtly influence."4
Though this at least allows the Brahmans some social worth, there is a
tone indicating their ultimate political uselessness and economic self
interest. However, on the ground realities, the rulers and the merchants,
the farmers, and even the low caste laborers depended on the Brahmans
for spiritual guidance and advice.

The vast majority of Brahmans were not hangers-on at the royal court.
Brahmans were scholars. They preserved and passed on the sacred texts,
ensuring their survival through the ages. It could be said that Brahmans
are the main reason that Vedic knowledge and Hindu philosophical treatises
are still extant, after centuries of foreign occupations, and the vicissitudes
of a hot climate with torrential seasonal rains. It was, after all, their
duty or dharma to preserve and transmit the Vedic/Indic traditions.

Students should be informed, when discussing the Caste System, that modern
Hindu teachers such as Swami Vivekananda, who visited the U.S. in the
1890s, Shri Aurobindo, a revered twentieth-century philosopher and vocal
advocate for Indian independence, and also the well-known leader Mahatma
Gandhi, have been at the forefront of removing caste from Indian society.
Anti-caste movements in modern India include the Arya Samaj, founded in
1875, the largest religious organization in India, and Swadhyaya, a popular
religious movement devoted to social causes founded in 1954. The current
ruling party of India, the BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party) rejects caste
and has made an effort to give prominence to leaders from lower classes.

There are socio-religious organizations in India working to open the
Hindu priesthood to members of all castes, and to woman, who have gained
acceptance in many communities. Though caste continues to be a problem
and caste conflicts can occasionally erupt in violence, much like racial
violence in the U.S., there are many ongoing reform efforts associated
with Hindu social, religious and political movements.5

Another field applied to the study of India that can be shaped to offer
primarily negative views of the society is the discourse on the condition
of women. The role that women played in the independence movement is rarely
discussed in classes, nor is the fact that Indian women continue to be
deeply involved in politics. Significantly, at the local panchayat,
village council level, over fifty percent of democratically elected gram
pradhans, village headmasters (mayors), are now women. After independence
in 1947, women were given the franchise and did not have to wait for the
suffragette or the women's liberation movement to earn their constitutional
rights. Additionally, there is currently a bill in parliament to amend
the constitution and reserve thirty percent of the seats for women in
the Lok Saba (the democratically elected "lower" house of the
Indian parliament). Though there are ongoing debates about how those reservations
should be implemented, and the bill has not yet passed, it can be assumed
that it will be a long time until thirty percent of the members of the
U.S. Congress are female.

According to most Americans, women in India are to be pitied. The positive
social progress made by many Indian women in the twentieth century is
usually ignored. The very gradual and much maligned development of the
Suffragette movement in the U.S. is rarely compared to the correspondingly
slow process of upliftment of modern Indian women. The image prevails
that if the unfortunate female in India survives a deprived childhood,
she is likely to be burned in a dowry death after her forced marriage
to a complete stranger. Indian women are shown as downtrodden and powerless
victims, unlike American women who have more freedom. Indira Gandhi is
seen as an anomaly.

Indian feminist scholars often complain that the production of the "third
world woman" in Western feminist discourse creates an image of Hindu
women as victims of oppressive traditional structures and denies them
any agency over their own lives. Indian feminists argue that there are
culture differences in terms of oppression, and not all women in the world
want to be "liberated" by a universalizing Western white middle-class
feminist perspective. They claim that focusing on patriarchal oppression
alone, and discounting economic and political disempowerment which are
also prevalent in Western, predominately Christian societies, serves to
continue the ethnocentrism of post-colonialism.

One highly inflated stereotype that is regularly used to describe Indian/Hindu
cultural practices is the discourse regarding sati, or as the British
spelled it, "suttee"  the burning of widows on their husbands'
funeral pyres. Sati has never been widely practiced in India, and in fact
in the modern period is very, very rare. Defining Hindu practices through
a discussion of sati is no more accurate than defining Christianity by
delving at length into the "Burning Times" in Medieval Europe
when as many as nine million women, and even children, were burned at
the stake as witches through the encouragement and official approval of
the Christian Church. The burning of women does not define Christianity
any more than the burning of widows defines Hinduism  both are long
discarded practices of the past.

The British justified their exploitation of India by the White Man's
Burden, which often meant rescuing "Brown women" from "Brown
men." Madhu Kishwar, the editor of the Indian feminist journal, Manushi,
wrote,

Our erstwhile colonial rulers who needed the pretense of being on
a civilizing mission here to justify their brutal reign had a vested
interest in identifying select criminal acts and projecting them as
Indian traditions in need of reform. They began this cultural invasion
by deliberately targeting a few cases of young widows in Bengal who
were forcibly burnt on their husbands' pyres, calling those murders
sati and banning it by law, so they could appear as agents of a superior
civilization rescuing victims from a savage culture. They even called
their mission the White Man's Burden! Thereafter, the supposedly miserable
plight of a newly invented creature called the Indian woman became emblematic
of the inferior civilization and culture of the Indian people.6

The popular media in the West often runs stories about "dowry deaths,"
when women are murdered by their in-laws because of blind greed. Often
the media's explanation of such criminal behavior is blamed on inherent
anti-female bias in Hindu society. Yet the cases of "bride burning"
or "dowry deaths" are few and far between in a country of a
billion people. Wives and girlfriends murdered by their husbands or significant
others are all too common crimes, certainly not unknown in modern Western
countries. But such crimes are carried out by rogues and have no more
to do with Hinduism or the Hindu way of life than they do with Christianity
or the American way of life.

But in the media, "dowry deaths" are sensationalized and are
often given worldwide publicity, particularly by proselytization groups,
in an effort to denigrate Hindu traditions and Indian society. In contrast,
crimes in America such as the burning of Black churches, or hate crimes
against homosexuals, or wife murdering to collect insurance, or wife battering,
of which there are thousands of cases each year, are treated as secular
crimes and receive very little or no publicity. We do not define American
society with images of domestic abuse. Introducing American students to
India through a discussion of dowry deaths is as unrealistic as teaching
school children in India about America by focusing primarily on domestic
violence, as if it is the defining characteristic of either society.7
There are criminal elements in every country that victimize women and
children.

In our classrooms, many conscientious teachers strive to present nonbiased
materials in their classes. Unfortunately, often recommended readings,
such as May You Be the Mother of a Hundred Sons: A Journey Among the
Women of India8 are highly stereotyped and use the untenable
convention of comparing the lives of poor village women in India with
the lives of middle class urban American women. Naturally, the village
women seem less free and independent.

A more appropriate approach would be a comparison of village women in
India with poor women in rural Appalachia, or upper class women in Bombay
with their counterparts in urban America.9 Sometimes the textbooks
themselves can undermine the teachers' efforts.10 For example,
this statement in large bolded italics meant to stimulate interest on
the first page of the chapter about India from a World History textbook:

Although many Hindu rituals no longer exist in India, some, such
as walking across a bed of hot coals or lying on a bed of nails, are
still practiced to gain forgiveness for sins or to build spiritual control.
They continue to intrigue outsiders who have never experienced the rich
cultural diversity of India.11

This implies that though Hinduism seems to be fading out in India, some
strange rituals are commonplace and still practiced. After a hard day
at the office, the banker or farmer comes home and walks across a bed
of hot coals before dinner. In reality, most Indians have never seen,
let alone tried, this type of tapasya, mortification of the flesh,
unless they have gone to a Kumbha Mela or other spiritual fair
where Sadhus and holy men may indeed perform these tricks. This
casual statement leads the naïve reader to assume that these rituals
may be widely practiced in modern India, when they are actually very rare.12

Making this sensationalist comment in bold italics at the very beginning
of the chapter on India immediately creates an exotic picture in the mind
of the student, whose Indian teenage counterpart, after doing his or her
homework, lies around on a bed of nails watching ZTV (India's version
of MTV). If this book is the only source of information about India available
to the students, they may assume that Indian teens regularly walk on coals
and sit on nails. Perhaps such tapasya will become a fad in the U.S. much
like body piercing and painting the hands and feet with henna have become
popular.

Wild fictitious accounts about India, such as eating monkey brains and
eyeballs and other strange practices portrayed in Indiana Jones and
the Temple of Doom, often find their way into the classroom through
the back door. With films such as Schindler's List and Amistad,
Hollywood is writing the scripts for our historical narratives, but when
they get it really, really wrong, like Spielberg did in Temple of Doom,
the negative images can have pervasive repercussions with unexpected longevity.

Notes

2. In the context of cultural borrowing, it is interesting to note one
of India's lasting contributions to what has come to be considered the
"Western" lifestyle and that was the export of a thick cotton
cloth known as "Dungaree" which, in the sixteenth century was
sold at a market near the Dongarii Fort in Bombay. Portuguese and Genoan
sailors used this durable blue broad cloth, dyed with indigo, for their
bellbottom sailing pants; it soon became popular with farmers and others.

3. For an excellent resource about Ancient India, see: "Ancient
India," part of the Ancient World History Program of History Alive!
Created by the Development Team of Teacher's Curriculum Institute, Executive
Director, Bert Bower, 2465 Latham Street, Suite 100, Mountain View, California
94040: 1997. For more information call (800) 497-6138 or e-mail at info@historyalive.com.
This thick binder is rich with useful activities and ideas and valuable
information. An example of the contents can be found at: http://www.teachtci.com/
curriculum/wh6-program.asp.

5. These two books may be of use when seeking to "read against the
text" of the usual negative treatment of Indic traditions: S. Kak,
The Wishing Tree: The Presence and Promise of India (Munshiram
Manoharlal, New Delhi, 2001). This book is based on invited lectures at
Stanford University and the University of California in 2000. The book
presents an overview of Indian history with special emphasis on the Vedic
period and history of science. It begins with recent archaeological discoveries
including the discovery of the rock art and the elucidation of the Indus-Sarasvati
cultural tradition. It describes the influence of Indic ideas on modern
science. The book is addressed to the layperson and scholar alike. And:
G. Feuerstein, S. Kak, D. Frawley, In Search of the Cradle of Civilization:
New Light on Ancient India (Quest Books, Wheaton, IL, 1995, 2001).
Synthesizing recent scholarship from archaeology and literary analysis,
this book dispenses with several jaded and timeworn academic myths about
ancient India to create a new understanding. Written in a straightforward
style, it carefully presents the significance of ancient Indian civilization
and culture for the study of world history.

7. The following compilation of statistics reflects a dysfunctional aspect
of American society: "Somewhere in America a woman is battered, usually
by her intimate partner, every 15 seconds (United Nations Study on the
Status of Women, 2000). Somewhere in America, a woman is raped every 90
seconds (U.S. Department of Justice, 2000). One in 3 murdered females
are killed by a partner, versus 3.6 percent of males (U.S. Department
of Justice, May 2000). Pregnant or recently pregnant women are more likely
to be the victims of homicide than to die of any other cause (Journal
of the American Medical Association, March 2001). Battering is the leading
cause of injury to women aged 15 to 44 in the United States (U.S. Surgeon
General, 1992)." See: http://www.vday.org/ie/
index.cfm?articleID=522.

8. Elisabeth Bumiller, May You Be the Mother of a Hundred Sons: A
Journey Among the Women of India (New York: Random House, 1990).

9. For an excellent critique of the book by Elisabeth Bumiller, May
You Be the Mother of a Hundred Sons, see the review by Veena T. Oldenburg
at http://sipa.
Columbia.edu/REGIONAL/SAI/veena.html. Professor Oldenburg writes,
"Out of a single village she extrapolates and conjures up a homogenized
larger reality of rural India. All its dull, dusty, changeless tedium
is captured in 'thick description,' reprehensibly uninformed by the work
of several scholars, some of them Western women, who have worked in villages
nearby that might have tempered her conclusions. Instead she generates
for the reader the impression that the poverty, dirt, flies, and the "ways
of the 1,000 people of Khajuron are the ways of most of humanity [in India]"
(p.76). Bumiller's brisk desire to arrive at conclusions on her journey
remind me of anthropology's beginnings under the aegis of colonial rule
for "places without history," to "observe" people
and judge their strange, barbaric, and unchanging ways. Unwittingly she
manages to revive the old-fashioned view of 'the Indian village' as that
quintessentially unchanging place that exists outside of history."

10. Of the numerous textbooks I surveyed, the one that had the most authentic
and inclusive treatments of Indian Civilization is World History: Continuity
and Change, by William Travis Hanes, III, published by Holt, Rinehart
and Winston of the Harcourt Brace & Company, Austin: 1997.

Yvette C. Rosser, who has a long-time interest in India and is
a former secondary school teacher, is currently finishing her Ph.D. in
the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Texas.
The topic of her dissertation is a comparison of historical narratives
in school textbooks used in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh.